NOM placed the measure on the
California ballot in 2008 after the state's highest court legalized
gay marriage. Proposition 8 trumped the court's ruling and put an
end to gay and lesbian weddings taking place in the state.

The ruling, handed down Wednesday by
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, says Proposition 8 violates
the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples who wish to
marry.

Gallagher, who stepped down as the
group's president in April and is now listed as its board chair,
called Walker's ruling a “radical rejection of Americans' rights.”

“Here we have an openly gay federal
judge substituting his views for those of the American people and of
our Founding Fathers who I promise you would be shocked by courts
that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our
Constitution,” Gallagher said in a television appearance.

In an op-ed published Thursday in the
San Francisco Chronicle, Gallagher also went after the two
attorneys who litigated the case, Ted Olson and David Boies, claiming
that they pushed the case to satisfy their “hunger for media
attention” and “huge egos.”

NOM also backed a referendum in Maine
last year that repealed a gay marriage law approved by lawmakers.
Walker's decision is certain to complicate the group's efforts to
repeal a gay marriage law in Iowa.

Lately, the group has been plying the
argument that gay marriage foes are being denied their civil rights.
In her op-ed she returned to the theme: “[T]he Supreme Court will
uphold Prop. 8 and the core civil rights of Californians and all
Americans to vote for marriage as one man and one woman.”